The Obama administration on Friday announced changes to its signature healthcare law that will make it easier for religious organizations not to cover birth control for women.
Under the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, most forms of contraception for employees must be covered at no cost. This provision has come under fire from religious organizations that oppose birth control or consider things like the morning-after pill to be abortifacients – substances that induce abortion. They are not.
The ACA’s contraception mandate does not apply to houses of worship, but religious groups have pushed for the same protection to be granted to religiously affiliated organizations like hospitals, schools and nonprofits.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has been involved in many prominent legal cases challenging the contraception mandate, said that despite the changes announced on Friday, Obamacare would still force religious groups to provide contraception in violation of their religious beliefs.
“Especially after the supreme court’s recent King v Burwell decision allowed the government to expand its healthcare exchanges, there is no reason at all the government needs religious employers to help it distribute these products,” Becket Fund legal counsel Adèle Auxier Keim said in a statement.
Under the changes to the law, qualifying groups with a religious objection to the contraception mandate can send a note to the Department of Health and Human Services, instead of alerting the insurer. The government will then tell the insurer, so that it can provide alternative forms of birth control coverage.
This applies to privately held companies in which at least 50% of the company is owned by five or fewer people – though a family counts as one person.
In June 2014, the supreme court ruled in Burwell v Hobby Lobby, a case brought by a Christian-owned company, that “closely held” corporations had the same religious protections as individuals, and were therefore not required to follow the contraception mandate. The decision came under fire from women’s health groups, which have pushed the Obama administration to adhere to its initial plans.
One pressure group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said it did not expect Friday’s announcement to temper religious challenges to the contraception mandate. The group’s executive director, the Reverend Barry W Lynn, said in a statement the supreme court was responsible for making such challenges possible with its Hobby Lobby ruling.
“The administration had to respond to this ruling, and today’s regulations are a good-faith effort to protect women,” Lynn said.
“Although I hope I’m proven wrong, I fear that the religious right and its allies, the Catholic bishops, won’t stop until they have denied access to safe and affordable birth control to as many women as possible.”
